Fathers' Rights Movement in The United Kingdom - Fathers Rights Issues

Fathers Rights Issues

There are a number of issues which drive the participants in the fathers' rights movement:

• Residence with the children is rarely given to the father after divorce or separation.
• Shared residence (and shared parenting) is seldom used as an expedient to resolve family child residency disputes, frequently resulting in fathers being marginalised and unable to perform effectively in their capacity as fathers.
• When contact is denied, the courts frequently do not enforce their own orders.
• Whereas mothers get parental responsibility automatically, fathers only do so if they were married to the mother or signed the birth certificate.
• Fathers are obliged to pay means tested child support irrespective of whether they are allowed to see their children, and with no account taken of the mother's household's income.
• Parental leave favours mothers, paternity leave is substantially less than maternity leave
• Contact centre places are hard to obtain because of inadequate funding and at the same time their use is frequently demanded unreasonably - resulting in children being unnecessarily deprived of the love and care of their non-resident parent.
• When a father makes representations in court to see his child when this is being obstructed by the mother, adversarial court proceedings against the mother are inevitably the cause of further conflict. If a court can determine that a child should see its father, this could be done without reference to the mother, who may be deemed irrelevant to the proceedings in cases of implacable hostility.